Due to the insanity of finishing up group projects and final exams this week, I will not be posting on my blog.  You can check out some other awesome blogs under links on the right side of the screen and also check out some new things on the site including the podcast.  I hope you have a great week and a great beginning to the Christmas season!  Posting will resume December 8th so stay tuned.

Today is the one day of the year that we set aside to give thanks.  The rest of the year, we have a tendency to focus so much on ourselves that we do not remember to be thankful to God and others.  Today, I would encourage you to spend some extended time with the Lord thanking and praising Him for what He has done in your life!  I would also encourage you to share with the people in your life what you are thankful for about them.  

When I was in high school, one of my teachers suggested making a list of 10 things you are thankful for every hour throughout the day.  That is a great way to remind ourselves that we are blessed.  So here is a small portion of what I am thankful for:

• Life
• Breath
• Jesus Christ 
• Family 
• Friends
• Health
• My Gifts and Talents
• Grace
• Jesus’ Life, Death, and Resurrection
• The Gospel
• Church
• People Who Have Invested in My Life
• My Job
• And Many More Things that I Do Not Have Time to List

Whether you are just getting into blogging or reading blogs or consider yourself a blog veteran, you are always looking for blog recommendations to add to your life.  I plan on focusing my Saturday blog posts on interesting posts, blogs, podcasts and other online media that I have discovered.

Here are my recommendations for the week:

Albert Mohler had two very interesting posts in the last two weeks worth exploring:

• England’s Atheist Bus Marketing Campaign- Athiests are putting bus banners to promote their belief that God does not exist.
• Problems at “Hour of Power” Ministries Over Doctrine- The recent separation of the Schuller father and son minister team may be over doctrine and the prosperity gospel.  

NOTE: If you do not have an RSS reader to compile your blogs, you need to either get Google Reader or add your blog feeds to Mac’s Mail.  You can then subscribe to blogs and get automatically updated posts to your inbox or reader.  If you have not subscribed to my blog, you can do so by clicking here.

Since we have explored the benefits, barriers, and the necessity of accountability relationships, I figure I would end the topic of accountability by describing some practical ideas to make accountability relationships a part of your life.

Pray for Your Accountability Relationship

If you do not currently have an accountability relationship, pray that God would lead you to someone to pursue accountability with.  A good person for this relationship would be someone of the same gender who you interact with in everyday life who is seeking to follow Jesus Christ.  This may be someone at church, school, or one of the people that you hang out with.  After prayer, approach this person and ask questions about their relationship with Jesus Christ.  You can then propose the idea of having accountability conversations to spur each other on after Jesus Christ.

If you have an accountability relationship, I would encourage you to make prayer an essential part of it.  This is not just limited to prayers for the person in their absence but should also include prayers in person and over the phone.  There is something powerful about hearing someone else pray for you.  One practical thing that I do in my life is talk on the phone each day and pray for my accountability partner over the phone.  This has become a treasured and sacred time of encouragement.

Build Safeguards Against Sin 

Sin is deadly as we looked at earlier in the week.  You need to be intentionally open with your accountability partner and help build safeguards against sin.  This may mean giving your accountability partner username and password access to your emails. Facebook, and MySpace.  Guys especially need to use their accountability partners as a safeguard against pornography online.  The password swap is a good way to do this in addition to putting an internet filter on your computer.  There is a free internet tracking software called X3 Watch that tracks all of the websites that you go to online and emails any questionable websites to the people you choose.  This is a great tool in safeguarding against the temptation of lust online.  

You and your accountability partner also need to pray and discuss practical ways to safeguard your lives from the temptations that frequently cause you to sin.  This may be anything from discussing where you and your date went physically last Friday to posting verses on your mirror addressing the use of your mouth.

Make Your Time in the Word a Point of Discussion

The point of accountability first and foremost is to grow closer to Jesus Christ.  You will grow closer to your accountability partner in the process, but this should never be the priority.  We grow in Christ by spending time in the Word.  This time should be something that is done not out of habit or obligation but for the purpose of learning more about Jesus to worship and adore Him more.  The Bible is the core of the Christian faith and should also be the core of accountability relationships.

The Bible should be causing you to see Jesus Christ for who He is and to respond in worship to Him and desire to become more like Him.  In reading scripture with this in mind, you open the door for a great discussion with your accountability partner.  You should not be asking “Did you read your Bible today?” because this question communicates a view of the Bible as a spiritual box to check off.  You should instead ask each other “What are you learning about Jesus Christ through your time in the Word?” or “What is God teaching you?”  These questions open up the door for a discussion about your relationship with Jesus not merely the spiritual ritual that you practice.

Live Life Together

Accountability relationships should not be just about accountability talk time.  You should hang out and live life with your accountability partner.  In the context of real life is where your accountability relationship will grow toward each other.  As you get to know each other better, you will become more open and willing to deal with real life issues.  

Accountability should be a friendship that is focused on encouraging each other to seek after Jesus with everything!  Do you have an accountability relationship in your life?  If not, start praying for God to show you someone to seek after Jesus alongside.

Yesterday, we looked at some benefits of an accountability relationship.  There are several barriers that need to be faced in building an accountability relationship in your life.  

Barrier 1: Pride

Pride can be a huge barrier to accountability.  It can make itself known in accountability relationships in two primary ways.  The first way that pride can become clear is in our attitude towards accountability in general.  Pride says that you are doing well with your personal relationship with Jesus Christ.  Your pride generated this good standard by finding some people who are worse off in their relationships with Jesus than you are to make the comparison shift in your favor.   This pride makes you shun the thought of needing anyone or being willing to even enter into an accountability relationship.  The first type of pride stops an accountability relationship from even beginning.  

The second type of pride does not stop accountability from happening but enters into an accountability relationship and poisons it from the inside.  This poisonous pride brings an attitude of self righteousness and outward spirituality that is really a mask for what is really going on inside.  In an accountability relationship, this will cause a lack of openness because openness means that the mask of perceived holiness must be removed.  This lack of openness on one side of the relationship will cause the prideful person to further validate their self righteousness as they learn the struggles of their accountability partner.  Pride causes a person to judge rather than love and to judge rather than confront.  Pride is a killer of initiating accountability and a poison that kills accountability relationships.  It is a barrier that must be addressed, repented of, and dealt with. 

Barrier 2: Busyness

Accountability relationships take time to begin and maintain.  It is easy for us as Christians to so fill our schedules with Christianized activities such as Bible studies every night of the week that we do not take time to focus on our personal relationship with Jesus Christ through prayer and time in God’s Word.  If these two things that we see as devotions that we can feel obligated to do so often fall through the cracks, how easy will it be for this new concept of accountability relationships, that we do not see as something that “good Christians” do, to fall through the cracks?

Accountability requires intentionality.  You must build conversations focused on accountability into your schedule and flow of life, or you will never live in an accountability relationship with a fellow brother or sister in Christ.

Barrier 3: Shame

Coming face to face with your sin and being real with someone else about it can cause great shame.  When you look at your own life and who God is calling you to be, you realize that these two things do not match up a whole lot of the time.  You find yourself still struggling with the same old sins that cause you to stumble week after week which brings you shame.  

The grace of Jesus Christ is what covers our sin and shame.  In accountability relationships, we can remind each other that our shame has been put upon Jesus Christ on the cross.  We no longer have to live in shame.  We can live a victorious life in Jesus Christ through the power of the Holy Spirit who indwells us as Christians.  Accountability relationships allow us to encourage each other that the shame is gone, and we are free to continue to seek after God!

• Someone to talk to about anything.
• Someone to pray with you about your life.
• Someone to encourage you when you feel like you can’t go on.
• Someone to rejoice when you rejoice
• Someone to weep with you when you weep.
• Someone to share with about what God is teaching you.
• Someone to challenge you to go deeper in your relationship with Jesus.
• Someone to keep you from hiding from your sin.
• Someone to pray for and encourage.
• Someone to be the real you, junk and all, before.

Taking the idea of the sovereignty of God to politics. God will reign on the throne tonight as Lord no matter who is the next president. I am a Christ-follower before I am an American.  My confidence in the future is not based on a future here and now. When trials and troubles come, they remind us that eternity is what matters. Our home, if we believe in Jesus, is not here on American soil but in heaven with Jesus Christ. My confidence is not in a government, political party, system of economics, or a president. My confidence and future are founded on the sovereignty of Almighty God and the substitutionary death and atonement bought for me by Jesus’ blood shed on the cross. That is why in the midst of the economic crisis, political debates, and uncertainty of the future of America, I will sleep well tonight knowing that nothing is beyond the sovereign will and design of Almighty God!

Accountability is important because sin is serious.  Your sin and my sin was dirty, heinous, and filthy enough in the site of Almighty God that it was due justice for Jesus Christ to bleed and die on a cross to pay the penalty that your sin and my sin warranted.  Randy Alcorn posted a blog citing a list of the consequences that falling into sexual immorality would have on his life and ministry.  These are some consequences that Randy foresees that could become realities in his life if he was to fall into sexual sin.  As you read through this list let it remind you of the seriousness of sin:

Personalized List of Anticipated Consequences of Immorality

• Grieving my Lord; displeasing the One whose opinion most matters.
• Dragging into the mud Christ’s sacred reputation.
• Loss of reward and commendation from God.
• Having to one day look Jesus in the face at the judgment seat and give an account of why I did it.
• Forcing God to discipline me in various ways.
• Following in the footsteps of men I know of whose immorality forfeited their ministry and caused me to shudder. List of these names:
• Suffering of innocent people around me who would get hit by my shrapnel (a la Achan).
• Untold hurt to Nanci, my best friend and loyal wife.
• Loss of Nanci’s respect and trust.
• Hurt to and loss of credibility with my beloved daughters, Karina and Angela. (”Why listen to a man who betrayed Mom and us?”)
• If my blindness should continue or my family be unable to forgive, I could lose my wife and my children forever.
• Shame to my family. (”Why isn’t Daddy a pastor anymore?”; the cruel comments of others who would invariably find out.)
• Shame to my church family.
• Shame and hurt to my fellow pastors and elders. List of names:
• Shame and hurt to my friends, and especially those I’ve led to Christ and discipled. List of names:
• Guilt awfully hard to shake—even though God would forgive me, would I forgive myself?
• Plaguing memories and flashbacks that could taint future intimacy with my wife.
• Disqualifying myself after having preached to others.
• Surrender of the things I am called to and love to do—teach and preach and write and minister to others. Forfeiting forever certain opportunities to serve God. Years of training and experience in ministry wasted for a long period of time, maybe permanently.
• Being haunted by my sin as I look in the eyes of others, and having it all dredged up again wherever I go and whatever I do.
• Undermining the hard work and prayers of others by saying to our community “this is a hypocrite—who can take seriously anything he and his church have said and done?”
• Laughter, rejoicing and blasphemous smugness by those who disrespect God and the church (2 Samuel 12:14).
• Bringing great pleasure to Satan, the Enemy of God.
• Heaping judgment and endless problems on the person I would have committed adultery with.
• Possible diseases: gonorrhea, syphilis, chlamydia, herpes, and AIDS (pain, constant reminder to me and my wife, possible infection of Nanci, or in the case of AIDS, even causing her death, as well as mine.)
• Possible pregnancy, with its personal and financial implications, including a lifelong reminder of sin to me and my family.
• Loss of self-respect, discrediting my own name, and invoking shame and lifelong embarrassment upon myself.

Sin is not something that we as Christians should be comfortable playing around with.  Sin should be prayed about, confronted, and repented of.  This is something that can be done in part through an accountability relationship.  

Through accountability, we are willing to become real with someone about the struggles and sins in our lives.  An accountability relationship allows us to pray for each other specifically about areas of struggle and also to be able to ask the hard questions about our resistance of sin or falling into sin.  This also makes another small consequence come into the equation - if we have sinned and fallen, we know that we will be asked specifically about it and have to come clean.  

Accountability allows fighting sin to no longer be a solo endeavor.  Through accountability, a Christian now has someone to celebrate victories with and to pray for and encourage in times of defeat.  Your sin is still your struggle, but you have someone who you know is on their knees praying for your victory.  Do you have this kind of accountability in your life?

Are you a blogger?  Do you love to read and review books on your website?  If so, this is an awesome opportunity for you!  I recently found a website online through the Christian publishing company, Thomas Nelson, where bloggers can get free books to read and review online.  The program is called Thomas Nelson: Book Review Bloggers. I have just joined the program and look forward to the free books and opportunity to give input.  

The program gives you an initial free book which you are supposed to read entirely and then post a review on your blog and on a bookseller site like Amazon covering the entire book.  Thankfully, these reviews can be positive or negative.  In exchange for a 200 word review, you get a free book and a link from Thomas Nelson’s website to your blog and review.  

My first book, Kingdom of the Occult by Walter Martin, is on the way.  Stay tuned for this and more book reviews to come.